The Myth of 1648

Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations

Benno Teschke

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781789605075
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Winner of the 2003 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize
This book rejects a commonplace of European history: that the treaties of Westphalia not only closed the Thirty Years' War but also inaugurated a new international order driven by the interaction of territorial sovereign states. Benno Teschke, through this thorough and incisive critique, argues that this is not the case. Domestic 'social property relations' shaped international relations in continental Europe down to 1789 and even beyond. The dynastic monarchies that ruled during this time differed from their medieval predecessors in degree and form of personalization, but not in underlying dynamic. 1648, therefore, is a false caesura in the history of international relations. For real change we must wait until relatively recent times and the development of modern states and true capitalism. In effect, it's not until governments are run impersonally, with no function other than the exercise of its monopoly on violence, that modern international relations are born.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Origins and Evolution of the Modern States-System: The Debate in International Relations Theory
• 2. A Theory of Geopolitical Relations in the European Middle Ages
• 3. The Medieval Making of a Multi-Actor Europe
• 4. Transitions and Non-Transitions to Modernity: A Critique of Rival Paradigms
• 5. L’État, c’est moi!: The Logic of Absolutist State Formation
• 6. The Early Modern International Political Economy: Mercantilism and Maritime Empire-Building
• 7. Demystifying the Westphalian States-System
• 8. Towards the Modern States-System: International Relations from Absolutism to Capitalism
• Conclusion: The Dialectic of International Relations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index